Dear Everyone,

 

We are having quite a few changes lately! First off, we have a new pair of elders that opened the area that we were going to open at the beginning of the transfer. One was already here, serving as a trio with the District Leader and his companion, and the other came straight from Cape Verde due to a visa problem. Also, I received a phone call this morning saying that I need to be trained tomorrow to be a Sister Training Leader... AAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Anyway, this week was good. We are still in the finding, finding, finding, part. On Wednesday we didn´t have a single appointment, so we walked and walked and walked, just like those primary children! But we are also having good progress with our investigators. Paulo is slowly getting off tobacco. We decided to let him set his own goals on a calendar with gave him, and we would check up and help him keep up on his goals. I really hope that this works out!

 

João Carlos´ family basically rocks. We were only teaching Susana (wife) and Mariana (daughter) and when we presented a baptismal date they were excited, but said that they wanted to be baptized as a family... in other words that they wanted Paulo, the other son, to have a chance too! So we started teaching Paulo and he is just as open and sweet as Mariana and Susana! I am so excited about them.

 

I received a little piece of bad news from my old area. Sílvia, who was baptized on January 4th, decided to leave the Church because of doubts that she had about the Pre-Earth life. Man, that is so sad. I really wish that we could´ve taught her better how to receive personal revelation in personal prayers about our doubts and concerns! It´s just another evidence that we need to walk in faith on the Lord, and not on our doubts!

 

I love you all and I hope all is well!

 

Sister Derrick

Dear Everyone,

 

Wow. If there is one thing that we learned this week is that when God makes a promise, He´s not joking around. We fasted last Sunday for: helping Paulo quit smoking, working in unity with the ward, and finding/reckognizing/helping the elect. So we did everything within our power to realize our vision, and the Lord did waaaay more than what we expected.

 

We´ve been calling Paulo just about everyday to remind him about his goals and to help encourage him. In one lesson we explained more about the Priesthood and how he could have a blessing from a member of the bishopric. He was excited about the invitation, so the next lesson we talked about faith and the 2nd counselor gave him a beautiful Priesthood blessing to help Paulo quit smoking and drinking coffee. The effect was outstanding. Paulo went from smoking 30 cigarettes to 14 in one day! 

 

We finally have a ward mission leader! His name is Nadgar and he is a more or less active youth preparing for a mission. He isn´t exactly what we were hoping for, being the temple ward, but he´s the one the Lord called. We´ll have to work with what we´ve got. Sometimes it frightens me that the Lord calls the `weak and simple to thrash the nations.´ Our meetings with him have been trainings for him to understand what missionary work really is and his role as a mission leader. If we don´t have unity... the ship will sink.

 

We taught the family of João Carlos, a recent convert, that is super elect. He is a military pilot that found the Gospel in Porto (northern Portugal) but at the time was away from his family. As he travelled around for work, he went to Church at the American military bases, where he had lots of great support. João recently retired so that he could be a better family man for his wife and 2 kids at home. The first thing he did was take his daughter to church and invite us over for a lesson! I am sooooooo excited about them!

 

Yesterday we gave talks in Sacrament Meeting about the importance of sharing the gospel. Both Sister Thornley and I read Elder Ballard´s talk from this past October Conference in preparation. He invited us to conquer our fears and worries of sharing the Gospel be kneeling in prayer for more missionary opportunities and the ability to reckognize them when they arrive. We invited the ward to do this, and we also did it ourselves as we left the apartment after lunch. THAT INVITE WAS NOT A JOKE! We had a lot more opportunities than normal even though only one of our appointments were solid. For instance a guy tried to sell us wallets, but we had the opportunity to say that Sunday is the day of the Lord, so we´ll have to waith until Monday. By the end of the day we ended up with a whopping 6 new investigators! God truly proves Himself when we are willing to follow the apostles and prophets.

 

Although we as human beings fail all the time, the Lord NEVER fails us. Everything that we prayed for and fasted for came to be reality even though it wasn´t in the ways we were exactly expecting. I hope that you guys have a great week and that all is well.

 

Sister Derrick

Dear Everyone,

 

Oh boy was it rainy this week! we experienced what Sister Thornley calls `side-ways rain´ where there is so much wind that you need to hold your umbrella straight in front of you and hope that you don´t accidentally poke someone´s eye out! In fact we got so wet that the soles of Sister Thornley´s boots disintigrated yesterday. It´s a good thing that today we could go shopping! 

 

As far as the work goes this week we have been doing a lot of finding, planting, and sifting the wheat from the tares. This weekend we fasted for the capacity to find, reckognize and help the elect to progress and come unto Christ. It sure is nerve racking being Presidnet´s guinea pig because I went from having an average of 8 or 9 investigators in Church to having 2. But hey! It took Sister Giberson and I two transfers to get to that point, so I´m hoping that miracles will happen with time! We´ve made huge progress, though. The first week we had streets for our plans, but now we have a nice little handful of investigators. I´m hoping that I can leave an area better than I found it.

 

This Saturday we were chosen to train some future missionaries for an afternoon in the neighboring stake for a Mini-MTC experience. It was so much fun to help them and to hear of their conversion stories. Truly their decisions to serve missions will affect their future, their families, those they serve and their own country.

 

I remember that the week before my mission I talked casually with Sister and President Harbertson (a nice couple in the ward that are serving as mission presidents in Peru) about the mission. I remember that I explained that I was nervous that so many sister missionaries were leaving without are true, solid reason to leave. One thing that Sister Harbertson said was, `But when they return, they will be such better mothers and women in the Church.´ She went further to say that `we need a generation of women that are strong like the women that crossed the plains´ and that President Monson was worried about the activity of members that has been slowly declining and declining. One phrase that I specifically remember that she told me about one of her conferences was that the reasoning of changing the age of service was the following: `If we cannot baptize a generation that we remain firm in the Restored Gospel, we´ll need to create one.´

 

For the first time in my mission I´ve seen this actually take effect upon me. I guess it took an assignment as a senior companion in another white wash for me to see it. In June of 2013 I was a good girl with a testimony and some great things going for me. But after being put into a refiner´s fire for the past 7ish months I can´t believe how much I have changed and learned and grown. Sometimes I look back at my older journal entries or think about my attitude before the mission and I shudder at the thought of how many things in my life were wrong or sinful. I´m so, so, so far from being perfect, but at least now I know how to search for answers, who to rely on and how to face my fears with a smile.

 

Thanks for all of your love and support. I love you all!

 

Sister Derrick

Dear Everyone,

 

Thank you so much for all of your guys´ prayers on my behalf. I really appreciate and feel the Lord´s support for us in the work here in Odivelas. Our week was alright, but we lost two days of work due to a Zone Conference and a failed atempt to get a bus pass outside of our area. Aside from that this week was great. We have been searching a ton for new investigators and we´ve been working to help older investigators improve. Areas really have their ups and their downs; there are times when we sow seeds and times when we reap the harvest. Right now we are sowing lots of good seeds.

 

We have been working a lot with a man named Paulo, who is marked for the 22nd. He prayed on his own for the first time yesterday! We are so proud of him. He has lots of great potential but he lives far away from the Church and doesn´t have a transport pass, so we need to work something out. Oh, I hope that he can come to Church! He is highly addicted to cigarettes and so we gave him a present! Sister Thornley is so cute and had this idea of making a Spiritual cigarette pack by putting scriptures on sticky notes inside an empty cigarette box with pictures of Christ on the front. It was fun! I really like our companionship.

 

Something that is really fun about this area is that there are English classes on Thursday nights! It is a really great experience for everyone there. Another thing about this area is that it´s gorgeous. We live on the 12th floor of our building and the view is spectacular. It´s completely the opposite of Setúbal´s Social projects.

 

Been in the same zone as the mission office has its perks and its vices. It has come to my knowledge that I am now considered President Fluckiger´s gunea pig being put in Odivelas on a white wash. He wants to see if our success in Setúbal was a fluke or not. Well, we´ll just have to show him that it wasn´t/isn´t! I hope that I can prove it to the Lord most of all, because after all these are His children we are talking about. I have a good feeling that this upcoming week is going to be great. I am really excited for it!

 

Sister Derrick